WHO warns vaccinated travellers could still need to be quarantined

[Stonecarver]

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/who ... 56qk3.html

Interesting quote
I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” Swaminathan said. “So I think we need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions.”

[redskies]

The information available is very clear that the vaccines don't prevent infection with the virus, they suppress symptoms. No one, as yet, knows whether you would be infectious when infected after vaccination.

[jennyjj01]

The information available is very clear that the vaccines don't prevent infection with the virus, they suppress symptoms. No one, as yet, knows whether you would be infectious when infected after vaccination.

That's really bugging me.
Maybe, the vaccines only suppress symptoms within the vaccinated ( the biggest symptom being death ) Giving carriers a false sense of security while they may go on to superspread and infect the non-vaccinated.

Great for the NHS, for a while. BUT...

Thinking about that is driving me nuts. They might vaccinate all the over 60s, say, and then have the virus rampaging through the international and local community and most who had it might be asymptomatic. Surely, we would all get complacent then and R number would go up and up. secondly, as it's penetration grows, there would be more opportunities for the virus to mutate. The infected but vaccinated might be free or even emboldened, to travel and MIGHT still be superspreaders?

What's wrong with this picture?

In my opinion, we'd be better off if the vaccine made infected but vaccinated folk more conspicuous, so we could continue to avoid them.

Tell me I'm wrong?

[Bosworth]

The virus will mutate. It’s what they do when their current channel of transmission is curtailed or other selective pressures are applied to their existence.

We’ve seen it at least four times already, most recently with a new strain that seems to be much more transmissible. Imagine that! A virus that requires transmission to survive, is mutating to adapt to the fact that transmission has been complicated by vaguely successful social distancing. The strain that mutates to be more transmissible will of course become dominant as it will be the one that actually infects people.

[Bosworth]

That's really bugging me.
Maybe, the vaccines only suppress symptoms within the vaccinated ( the biggest symptom being death ) Giving carriers a false sense of security while they may go on to superspread and infect the non-vaccinated.

Great for the NHS, for a while. BUT...

Thinking about that is driving me nuts. They might vaccinate all the over 60s, say, and then have the virus rampaging through the international and local community and most who had it might be asymptomatic. Surely, we would all get complacent then and R number would go up and up. secondly, as it's penetration grows, there would be more opportunities for the virus to mutate. The infected but vaccinated might be free or even emboldened, to travel and MIGHT still be superspreaders?

What's wrong with this picture?

In my opinion, we'd be better off if the vaccine made infected but vaccinated folk more conspicuous, so we could continue to avoid them.

Tell me I'm wrong?

The biggest symptom isn’t death. The most likely outcome for most people is a cough and a temperature. Most people could probably struggle on binging Netflix, a few might be taken to bed.

Getting the virus isn’t a death sentence. And I would wager significant sums that the new flavour that is much more transmissible is also proportionately less dangerous. It is always the case and it will always be ever thus in the history of pandemics.

In 4 months most of the vulnerable people I personally care about and most of the vulnerable people we as society should care about will be vaccinated. At that point, the rest of us can and should be able to make our own informed choices about the risks we take, as those risks are super low and carry an impact that is out of all proportion to the downside risk and cost.

[diamond lil]

Don't overthink it jennie xx Look at past epidemics - they all follow a pattern. They erupt and burn through a population then ease off - even ebola did this. I think it's too early to tell what vaccines will or wont do exactly because this is a new one - but we need to just stay careful and wait it out.

[jansman]

It will take years for a vaccine to have a marked effect against the virus.Trouble is, its been hyped up as a Silver Bullet,and in our world of Instant-Everything,we expected it to produce Instant- Protection.

I agree totally with Bosworth here.The Covid is not an instant death sentence.Yes,some WILL die,but Influenza has similar mortality rates. Back in March,Mrs J and me got the classic symptoms,staccato cough,temperatures and Mrs J lost taste and smell for about two weeks.Many carriers are symptom free!

We will have to work with,and around this problem.Maintaining hygiene and distance is the best way right now,whilst rolling out vaccination.To hope for everything to be ' back to normal' by Easter/Summer/ whenever is pie-in-the-sky.It's here for years now IMO.

Smallpox was a major issue in the second half of the 19th century in England,and even with vaccination,the distance and hygiene rules applied then ,as they do now.It was known as the Leicester Method.An epidemiologist on radio 4 recently said that this age old method,was the only defence against any new illness,until such a time as a vaccine or cure was developed.The results were pretty good back then it seems.

https://healthandvaccines.blogspot.com/ ... x-and.html

[GillyBee]

The big headache is not how dangerous the bug is to the average person. It is the chaos caused if everyone catches it in the same week.
If the vaccine has the effect that it keeps the vulnerable out of hospital and everyone else stays well enough that they do not need weeks off work then this becomes "just another 'flu" doing the rounds.
If however we reach a situation where 10% of the country is sick atthe same time, then we have a little problem called not enough staff for the hospitals, not enough police, not enough firemen, no grocery workers, no delivery drivers, no care workers etc etc.
Here in London where we are being hit hard I have seen a local post from a fireman's wife that there was no relief crew avaiable due to staff shortages to take over during a larger fire. Ambulances reporting similar issues - and this is with an estimated 1% of London feeling ill this week.
I was working in the NHS back during the swine flu outbreak and this was the big worry that was being planned for then.

[redskies]

The information available is very clear that the vaccines don't prevent infection with the virus, they suppress symptoms. No one, as yet, knows whether you would be infectious when infected after vaccination.

That's really bugging me.
Maybe, the vaccines only suppress symptoms within the vaccinated ( the biggest symptom being death ) Giving carriers a false sense of security while they may go on to superspread and infect the non-vaccinated.

Great for the NHS, for a while. BUT...

Thinking about that is driving me nuts. They might vaccinate all the over 60s, say, and then have the virus rampaging through the international and local community and most who had it might be asymptomatic. Surely, we would all get complacent then and R number would go up and up. secondly, as it's penetration grows, there would be more opportunities for the virus to mutate. The infected but vaccinated might be free or even emboldened, to travel and MIGHT still be superspreaders?

What's wrong with this picture?

In my opinion, we'd be better off if the vaccine made infected but vaccinated folk more conspicuous, so we could continue to avoid them.

Tell me I'm wrong?

I can't argue with you Jenny. I'm scratching my head here, not just at those who made the vaccines, but at the government, the alleged medical professionals in the news talking about us getting herd immunity from a vaccine that doesn't convey immunity - or a virus that we still don't know that we can be immune from and at all of those claiming that this will get 'life back to normal' and clamouring for the vaccine.

None of it makes sense to me, not even a little bit.

[Arzosah]

I delayed posting, but I'm still not sure what "more conspicuous" means, Jenny, in your original post, if I interpret it I *know* I'll get it wrong, I'm useless at that, can you say more?

I've isolated like crazy during the pandemic, as I'm amongst the more vulnerable - and what really concerns me isn't the death rate, which I understand/agree isn't huge. What concerns me is long covid/ organ damage/ extreme fatigue - that's a *much* higher percentage of the numbers infected.

And today's vaccine news! Bleeping hell - so, people are just getting one vaccine for ages, rather than two within a month - and I've seen a press statement from Pfizer saying their vaccine is untested at that level of delay. Just wonderful: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory comes to mind